Chapter III (2)

But the old miscreant had not paid her yet for that kiss, and he would have his account discharged in full. So he takes her face in his two old hands, and pats her on the cheek, and tells her, smiling, to be of good cheer, for she will never know any more of the young _maestro_, nor whether he be alive or dead. But if she wishes to throw down some dainty titbits from the dinner-leavings, on the chance they shall reach the lips she kissed, why it is but telling Raouf and Stefano to lift the trap. It may be a bit rusty, but if it were oiled on the hinges this time, the less trouble the next! At this _la Duchessa_ gave a long shriek, holding her head tight on, on either side, and then fell backward on the floor, and lay so, stark motionless. And then my great Duke seats himself on the nearest chair; and he has in his hand his crutched stick, to lean on against the gout in his foot. He takes it in his left hand, and just digs with it at the girl's body on the ground, either to rouse her or see if she be dead. But she does not move, and he has her carried away to bed; and his face is contented, as is that of a man who has worked well and deserved his fee.

I wish I could remember more of this old tale of four hundred years ago, but I had no chance to do so; for, after the scene I have just described, the noble Duke, hobbling a short space about the hall, brings up short just facing the bay where I have been hanged by his orders to spite la Maddalena; and then, after choking a little--as indeed he often did since that fierce grip of my young _maestro, lo Spazzolone_--he calls out to his fat _maggiordomo_, and bids him to see that I am removed to his own private room and hanged under the picture of Ganymede. But now he must only take it down and remove it to the old stone chamber, where the figs are put to dry on trays; and so leave it, to be hanged in his room when he is away at Rome, as will be shortly. So he hobbles away and I hear him getting slowly up the little stair that goes to his private room, and his attendants following him. The dropsical _maggiordomo_ stays to see that another man should come, with a ladder and a boy, to help, and they get me down from my hooks, and carry me off; and I can smell the dried figs, and the _stoia_ that is rolled up in a stack, and the empty wine-flasks. But I can see nothing, for they place me with my face against the wall, and cover me over with a sacking; and I can hear little more; and then the great door clangs to and is locked, and I am alone in the dark, without feeling or measurement of time, and only catching faint sounds from far-off.

I could guess, rather than hear, the sound of a footstep when one came, rarely enough, in the long corridor without. I could feel its rhythm in the shaken floor, but I could be scarcely said to hear it. I was aware of a kind of scratching close to me, that may have been some kind of beetle or scorpion, but of course it was quite invisible. There was one sort of _scaraflaggio_ that would come, even between me and the wall one time, and make a noise like a thousand whirlwinds, and beat against me with his wings, and I should have liked to be able to ask him to come often. But he seemed not to care about me; and I could just hear him boom away in the darkness, joyous at heart and happy in his freedom. Oh, if he could have known how different was my lot! I thought of how he would float out into the sunlight, whirring all the while like the wheels of the great _orologio_ at the old Castello when Fra Poco let it run down at noon so that he might reset it fair from the sundial on the wall in the Cortile where the well was--_our_ well!

It may have been days, or it may have been weeks or months, before a change came, and I again heard human voices. But it would not be longer than two or three months at most; seeing that it was immediately, as far as I could judge, on the top of a little chance that is dear to my memory now, after--so I gather--some four hundred years. For a sweet firefly came, by the blessing of God, between me and the dry wall, and paused and hung a moment in the air that I might get a sight of his beauty. You have seen them in the corn, how they stop to think, and then shoot on ahead, each to seek his love, or hers: so it is taught by those who say they know, and may be truly. This one also must needs go on, though I would have prayed him to stay, that _I_ might be his love. Yet this could not be, for neither did I know his tongue, nor was aught else fitting. So he went away and left me sad-hearted. He was a spot of light between a gloom behind and a gloom before, even as the Star of Bethlehem.

But about this that I was telling of. I had a sense of half-heard turmoil without. Then the lock in the door, and the imprecations of a man that could not turn the key. He swore roundly at him who made it, and at all locksmiths soever, as persons who from malevolence scheme to exclude all folk from everywhere; and I wished to rebuke him for his injustice, for how can a locksmith do less than make a key? And it was for him to choose the right key, not to keep on twisting at the wrong one, and swearing, which is what he was doing. But he was a noisy, blustering person, for when he did get in, being helped to the right key by a clever young boy who saw his error, he was much enraged with that boy for telling him; and he was ill-satisfied with such a place as this to stow away the furniture, but he supposed they must make it do.

Then came much moving in of goods. And I could gather this, but no more, from the conversation of those who brought it in--that it was the furniture of someone who was little loved, and only spoken of as "he" or "_il Vecchiostro_"--that he was gone on a journey, and much they cared how soon he arrived at the end of it. The boy, who was young and inquisitive, then asking whither this was that he had gone, they told him with a laugh that it was to his oldest friend, another like himself; to whom he had given his whole soul, and who would not care to part with him in a hurry. They hoped he would have a cool bed to sleep in. And when the boy hoped this too, they were very merry. But they worked hard, and brought in a great mass of furniture, which they stacked against the wall where I was, so that I was quite hidden away. There would be new fittings all through the castle now, they said. But one said no--no! it would only be in the _Vecchiostro's_ own private rooms. "'Tis done that he should be soonest forgotten," said one of them. But it was only just when they had brought in the last of it that this same one said that if ever he--this _Vecchiostro_--came back from Hell there would be all his gear ready for him. And then I saw this was some dead man's property that his successor would have put out of his sight.

Then says my young boy to his father, who was the man who had sworn at the key, why did they not take the Signora's portrait down instead of leaving it there, because everyone loved her; and for his part, she kissed him once, and said he was _carino_. Then says his father, what portrait? And he answers, "In there--behind." For he had peeped in round my frame thinking he knew me again; being in fact the same that had helped to get me down in the banqueting-hall, how long since I could not say. But his father calls him a young fool not to say so before it was too late; and as for him, it was time for his supper and bed, and whoever else liked the job might move all the chairs and tables again to fish her ladyship out. And as all were of one mind they laughed over this and went noisily away. And the door was locked and I heard no more. And the darkness was darker still and the silence deeper. And I longed for the _scaraffaggio_ to come and whirr once more, and for the sweet light of the _lucciola_. But there was none such for me. And my Maddalena must be surely dead, I thought, else that young boy would tell her I was here, and she would come to find the picture Giacinto painted of her in that merry time. But I waited for her voice in vain, and had nothing for myself but the darkness and the silence.

Just as the diver holds his breath and longs for the sudden air that he must surely meet--in a moment--in another moment!--so I held as it were the breath of expectation, and believed in the coming of those who could not but seek me; for at first I felt certain they would come. They would never leave me here, to decay! But there came no voice, no glimmer of light, and I fell into a stupor in which all memory grew dim, even that of my Maddalena.

What I suffered through that long period of silence and darkness I cannot tell, nor could you understand. The prisoner in his solitude is grateful for each thing that enables him to note the flight of time; and the fewer such things are the drearier is the sameness of his lot. Can you imagine it if they were all removed--a condition of simple existence in black space, with no means of marking time at all? Would you become, on that account, unconscious altogether of weariness from the long unalleviated hours? No, indeed! Take my word for it. Rather, you would find it, as I found it, a state of bondage such as one would long and pray might be the lot of such as had been, in this life, devils against the harmless; but going on through all eternity, no nearer the end now than when it started countless ages ago, an absolute monotone of dulled sense without insensibility--even pain itself almost an alleviation.

That is what my life, if you can call it life, was to me through all that term; but, as thought is dumb, though I know the time goes on, how long it goes on I know not. When I next hear human speech, the voices are new and the words strange and barbarous. Also, when I am taken from the wall and turned round to the light, I can see nothing, and I know not why. Perhaps it is all dark here at all times, and they have brought no light. I shall see, though, well enough when I am hanged up under Ganymede, and see my bad old Duke again, and even my other self, my Maddalena. I have a longing on me to see her once more, and to see her more like me, if it may be. It seems so long! So much longer than the time when I was left alone in the _Stanza delle Quattro Corone_. But what you may find hard to understand is this, that though I could not know how long this dreadful waking sleep had been, neither could I be sure it had not been a few hours only. I now know, for I have learned since, that it was over three hundred years. Yet when the end came it found me not without a hope of Maddalena; or if not Maddalena, at least the Duke.

But I do not see them, either of them. Nor old Marta Zan and her little dog. Nor the dropsical old _maggiordomo_. That there is no Giacinto is little wonder to me. For I believe him dead, killed by that fell blow on the olive neck I loved so well, just behind the ear. I wonder, though, that I see none of the others. But indeed I have much ado to see anything. All is in a mist of darkness.

Also, I am presently stunned by the clash of many voices. I can catch from the words of those who speak Maddalena's language, the tongue that I can follow, that there is a great wranglement over me and my sale price. For I am to be sold, and the foreigners who wish to buy me are loud in their dispraise of me; so much so that I do not understand why they should wish to possess me at all. In fact, they do actually go away after much heated discussion, speaking most scornfully of pictures as things no man in his senses would ever buy, and of pictures with frames like mine as the most valueless examples. I gather all this from repetitions made by others, in Maddalena's tongue, nearly but not exactly.

Presently back comes one of them to say he will go to six hundred pounds, but not a penny more. Then says a woman's voice, "Ah, Signore! Six hundred and fifty!" Then he, six hundred and twenty-five. And then some price between the two. And so we are agreed at last. And I am to be put in a box and sent to a place whose name I have never heard, that sounds like L'Ombra, a name that frightens me, for it sounds like the Inferno of the great poet, Dante.

But I should tell you that, before this riot, and noise, and disputation over me and my price, I had heard the unpacking and removal of the great stack of furniture that hid me. Only, as the persons who removed it have no interest for us, and did not seem from their conversation to be especially cultivated or intelligent, but rather the reverse, I have not said anything of them, nor of their valuations in _lire_ of each article as it was brought to light. Their voices were the very first that I heard; but though their words sounded strange to me, they only made me think that maybe they were from Milan or Genoa or some other place in Italy. I should not have guessed them Tuscans; that is all. Indeed, I hardly distinguished much of what they said until they had removed the last of the furniture and I was turned round to the light. Then I saw things in a cloud, and heard indistinctly. I made out, however, that I was thick with dust, and must be brought out and cleaned before anyone could see what I was like. Then I was carried away down some stairs, and in the end I was aware, but dimly, as in a dream, that I was again in the great chamber where I last saw la Maddalena lying on the ground insensible, while the old Duke prodded at her with a stick. I could see there were many people in the room, talking volubly. But I could not catch their words well until a Signora, who seemed to take the lead, wiped my face over with a wet sponge; and then I heard more. Her voice was clearest, and what she said was "_Ecco, Signori_! Now you can see the ear quite plain. _Ma com'e bella_! _Bella bella_!"--And then it was I came to hear all the clamour of voices of a sudden.

Then follows all the bargaining I told you of. The Signora's husband would not sell an old picture--not he!--for a thousand pounds in gold; not till all the dirt was off and he could see it fairly. All applauded this, and said in chorus neither would they! Who could tell what might not be, under the dirt? However, they knew so little about it that they would not mind buying this one, on the chance. But for a decently reasonable price--say five thousand Italian lire. On which the owner said, "_Come mai_! _E pochissimo_!" Then the _Signori Inglesi_ took another tone, and would have none of the picture, nor any picture, at any price! They would not know where to hang it. They did not like pictures on their walls. All the walls were covered with pictures already, all favourites, that must not be moved. But why need I tell you all this? You have heard folk make bargains, and the lies they tell.

The English Signori departed, having bought me for near six hundred and fifty English pounds. And then my lady and gentleman are mightily delighted, and dance about the room with joy. Now they will go to Monte Carlo and win back all they lost last year. Then I hear them talking in an undertone, thus:--

(He) "I hope they never suspected it was none of ours----"

(She) "Ah, _Dio mio_! And I had told them we were only _inquilini_"--that is, tenants.

(He) "_Non ti confondi_? Don't fret about that. They don't know what _inquilini_ means. They can only say '_mangia bene, quanto costa_!'"

(She) "_Speriamo_! But what a fine lot of old furniture! Couldn't we sell some of it, too?" And this young Signora, who was very pretty and impudent, and what I have since heard called svelte, danced about the room in high glee. But the good gentleman stopped her.

(He) "_Troppo pericolo_! The fat old Marchesa would find out. No, no! The picture is quite another thing----"

(She) "_Perche?_"

(He) "Can't you see, thickhead? If the old _strega_"--the old witch, that is--"had known the picture was there, do you suppose she wouldn't have had it out, long ago? And that other picture in front of it, with the eagle.... Don't dance, but listen!"

(She) "... Picture in front of it, with the eagle ... yes, go on!" But she won't quite stop dancing, and makes little quick tiptoe movements, not to seem over-subservient and docile.

(He) "I would have sold that, too, only it's too big for safety. This one will go in a small case. The _famiglia_ will have to be well paid. What was it la Filomena told you first of all about the room and the furniture? Do stop that dancing!"

(She) "There, see now, I've stopped! But you _have_ been told, once!"

(He) "Then tell again!"

(She) "It wasn't la Filomena. It was that old, old Prisca who knows all about the Castello--more than the Marchesa herself. She told me there was an old room in the great tower that had not been open for hundreds of years, as no one dared to go near it for fear of the wicked old Duke's ghost. I told her we were _liberi pensatori_"--that is to say, free-thinkers--"and he would not hurt us, and where was the key? We would not touch anything--only look in!"

(He) "Won't she tell about it all?"

(She) "Not till we go! Besides, she doesn't know. La Filomena won't tell her; she knows I know all about her and Ugo Pistrucci. And she's the only person that goes near the old Prisca, who hasn't been off her bed for months. Oh no! _She's_ all right. As for the man, I told them la Prisca said the _mobiglia_ was to be taken out and dusted and placed in the passage. _Stia tranquillo, mio caro_!"

(He) "What a happy chance these pig-headed rich milords happened to come in just as we got it. They might have gone before we found it! Only to think of it! _Seicento e cinquante lire_...!"

And so they went on rejoicing, and thinking of new schemes, and how they would get me packed off the very next day, and not a soul in the Castle would ever know I had ever been there. They were certainly very bad, unprincipled adventurers. You should have heard them talk of what fun they would have telling the old Marchesa about the great discovery of treasures they had made, and the care they had taken nothing should be lost. And then who knows but she might trust them to get a sale for all her old rubbish in England, and what a lot of money they might make, with a little discretion. If I had remained there I should have been longing always for a chance of telling the old _strega_, as they called her, what a nice couple she had let her Castle to for the summer months. For I am convinced, not only that they were thieves, but that they were not even lawfully married. However it may have been, I saw no more of them. For next day the same man that had done the removal of the furniture came with a box, and I was carefully packed, and saw nothing more, and distinguished little sound, for weeks it may have been, even months. As the solidity of the box absorbed all sight and hearing, and I knew nothing till I found myself on an easel in a sort of Studio in a town that I at once perceived to be L'Ombra. For what else could it have been?

At this point Mr. Pelly, who had been listening intently, interrupted the speaker. "I think you have got the name of the place wrong," he said. "I imagine it must have been London--_Londra_--the English Metropolis--not L'Ombra. The sounds are very similar, and easy to mistake."

"Possibly I was misled by the darkness. It made the name seem so appropriate. But it was not exactly night. There was a window near me, and I could see there was a kind of yellow smoke over everything. But there was music in the street, and children appeared to be running and shouting. Other things gave me the impression the time had been intended for morning, but that something had come in the way. It was a terrible place, much like to that dark third circle in Hell, where Dante and Virgilio saw the uncouth monster Cerberus.

"But let us forget it! Why should such a place be remembered or spoken of? I was there for no great length of time: long enough only for the picture-cleaner, in whose workshop I was, to remove the obscurations of four hundred years, and safeguard me with a glass from new deposits. For I understood him to say that I should be just as bad as ever in a very short space of time, in this beastly sooty hole, but for such protection.

"And yet this place was not entirely bad, nor in darkness at all times, for at intervals a phenomenon would occur which I supposed to be a peculiarity of the climate, causing the lady of the house to say, 'There--the sun's coming out. I shall get my Things on. Are you going to stay for ever in the house, and get fustier and fustier, or are you going to have a turn on the Embankment? You might answer me, instead of smoking, Reginald!' But I noticed that this phenomenon, whatever its cause, never seemed to attain fruition, the lady always saying she knew how it would be--they had lost all the daylight. I only repeat her words. I observed another thing worthy of remark, that it very seldom held up. I am again repeating a phrase that was to me only a sound. I have no idea what 'it' was, nor what it held up, nor why. I am only certain that the performance was a rare one, however frequently it was promised. But the gentleman who restored me seemed to have confidence in its occurrence, conditionally on his taking his umbrella. Otherwise, he said, it was cocksure to come down cats and dogs, and they would be in for a cab, and he only had half a crown.

"These persons were of no interest in themselves, and I should never remember or think of them at all but for having been the unwilling witness of a conjugal misunderstanding, which may quite possibly have led to a permanent breach between them. It is painful to think that the whole difference might have been made in the lady's jealous misinterpretation of her husband's behaviour towards a maiden named _La Sera_--who, as I understood, came in by the week at nine shillings, and always had her Sunday afternoons, whatever those phrases mean; no doubt you will know--if I had been able to add my testimony to her husband's disclaimer of amorous intent. For it was most clear that the whole thing was but an innocent joke throughout, however ill-judged and stupid. I saw the whole from my place on the easel, and heard all that passed. I cannot tell you how I longed to say a word on his behalf, when, some days later, two friends paid him a visit, who had evidently been taken into his confidence, but who seemed to think that he had withheld something from them, not treating them so frankly as old friends deserved. Whereupon he warmly protested that his wife had no solid ground of complaint against him, having gone off, unreasonably, in what he called "a huff"; but that he had just paid _La Sera_ her wages and sent her packing, so that now he had to make his own bed and black his own shoes.

"I am sorry to say that these two friends showed only an equivocal sympathy, winking at each other, and each digging the other in the ribs with strange humorous sounds, as of a sort of fowl. Also, they shook their heads at their friend, though not, as I think, reproaching him seriously, yet implying thus, as by other things said, that he was of a gay and sportive disposition that might easily be misled by the fascinations of beauty, which they were pleased to ascribe to _La Sera_. This was, however, scarcely spoken with an earnest intent, since this maiden, despite the beauty of her name--for one might conceive it to ascribe to her the tender radiance and sad loveliness of the sunset--was wanting in charm of form and colour, and had not successfully cultivated such other fascinations as sometimes make good their deficiency; as sweetness and fluency of speech, or a quick wit, or even the artificial seductions of well-ordered dress. I derived, too, a most unfavourable impression from a comment of her employer--to the effect that if, when she cleaned herself of a Sunday morning, she couldn't do it without making the whole place smell of yellow soap, she might as well chuck it and stop dirty.

"But I should grieve to think that this Signore's wife should have left him permanently for so foolish a quarrel. For, though their lives seemed filled with a silly sort of bickering, I believed from what I saw that there was really no lack of love between them, and I cannot conceive that they will be any happier apart. Indeed, had she been indifferent to her husband, could she have felt a trivial inconstancy, implying no grievous wrong, of such importance? But, indeed, it is absurd to use the word _inconstancy_ at all in such a case, though we may condemn the ill-taste of all vulgar trifling with the solemn obligations of conjugal duty. I wish I might have spoken, to laugh in their faces and make a jest of the whole affair. But silence was my lot.

"I have hung here, as I suppose, for six months past, and have often striven to speak, but none has heard me till now. Think, dear Signore, how I have suffered! Think how I have longed to speak and be heard, when my Madeline, my darling--who loves me, and says she loves me--has talked to her great dog of her lover that was killed in the war...."

Mr. Pelly interrupted. "Are you referring to young Captain Calverley?" he said. "Because, if so, it is not certain that he _is_ dead. Besides, I suppose you know that Miss Upwell and the Captain were not engaged?" And then the old gentleman fancied he heard a musical laugh come from the picture.

"How funny and cold you English are!" said the voice. "Was _I_ engaged to my darling, my love, that only time he pressed me to his bosom; that only time I felt his lips on mine? Was I not the bond-slave for life to the evil heart and evil will of that old monument of Sin, soaked deep in every stain of Hell? Was I not called his _wife_? Yet my heart and my soul went out to my love in that kiss, and laughed in their freedom in mockery of the laws that could put the casket that held them in bond, and yet must perforce leave them free. And when that young soldier tore himself away from my Madeline--I saw them here myself; there by the shiny fish, in the glass case--was their parting kiss less real than ours was, that hour when I saw him last, my own love of those years gone by?"

"A--it isn't a subject I profess to understand much about," said Mr. Pelly. He blew his nose and wiped his spectacles, and was silent a moment. Then he said, "But whatever the sentiment of the young lady herself may be, there can be no doubt about her mother's. In fact, she has herself told me that she is most anxious that it should not be supposed that there was any engagement. So I trust--if you ever do have the opportunity of speaking to anyone on the subject--that you will be careful not to give the impression that such was the case. I do not, perhaps, fully realise the motives that influence Lady Upwell--a--and Sir Stopleigh,--of course it's the same thing...."

Mr. Pelly stopped with a jerk. He found himself talking uncomfortably and inexplicably to space, beside the embers of a dying fire, and in the distance he could hear the carriage bringing the absentees back through the wintry night, and the ringing tread of the horses on the hard ground.

"Poor Uncle Christopher all by himself, and the fire out!" said the first comer into the Library. It was the young lady who came to see the Italian picture at the restorer's Studio in Chelsea, a little over six months past. She had changed for the older since then, out of measure with the lapse of time. But her face was beautiful--none the less that it was sad and pale--in the glow as she brought the embers together to make life worth living to one or two more faggots, just for a little blaze before we went to bed.

"I was asleep and dreaming," said the old gentleman. "Such a queer dream!"

"You must tell it us to-morrow, Uncle Christopher. I like queer dreams." This young lady, Madeline Upwell, always made use of this mode of address, although the old gentleman was no uncle of hers, but only a very old friend of the family who knew her father before she was born, and called him George, which was his Christian Christian-name, so to speak, "Stopleigh" being outside family recognitions--a mere Bartitude!

But the picture, which might reasonably have protested against Mr. Pelly's statement, remained silent. So, when his waking judgment set the whole down as a dream, it was probably right.